Let’s call a spade a spade. We now have a “Secret Police.”
The Blotter — This just gets better and better. What amazes me is how the public and the Bush-apologists just have no complaints. I guess nobody is seeing the potential for all sorts of blackmailing schemes here. Exactly why the big media hasn’t gone ballistic over this is amazing to me.
The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters’ phone records in leak investigations.
“It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration,” said a senior federal official.
The acknowledgement followed our blotter item that ABC News reporters had been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we were calling.
The official said our blotter item was wrong to suggest that ABC News phone calls were being “tracked.”
“Think of it more as backtracking,” said a senior federal official.
John, they are hardly “secret”. They are doing this right in front of everyone’s faces – and we just let them.
All this will do is force reporters and sources to take more precautions. Maybe they’ll have to actually meet each other, exchange handwritten notes in men’s bathrooms, or use some of those disposable cell phones that drug dealers use.
Or better yet – skype your leads in! Every newsroom in the country should set up an encrypted, anonomized skype tip line… and run it through a couple of servers in Denmark, so the feds can’t trace it down.
There ARE ways around the problem, and if it gets harder to talk to sources, it will make newspapers even more keen to do it – because of the exclusivity. To paraphrase a famous princess: “The more you tighten your grip, the more [leaks] will slip through your fingers…”
Why doesn’t the FBI just knock on the NSA’s door and ask for the phone records for those reporters?
All this means is that reporters at ABC and other major networks will walk down to Fry’s or Best Buy and buy up some pre-paid cellphones and then dole them out to those they need to maintain the privacy of.
But the fact of the matter is, is that now we live in an age of a American Secret Police.
Might as well call them the NSATT&BC
One thing I read is they are using call pattern analysis, not recording conversations. Intelligence agencies has determined that he calls made
could help identify the leadership and organization of a group. Technically they are logging the source, destination and times of the calls. You don’t know what to believe. Maybe there is a real and present danger the leadership isn’t releasing. I would hope that everything don’t reach the Sunday talking heads.
Clear and present danger…so tap ABC news. OK, makes sense.
Dave and others.
What is happening here is matter of principle.
We should not have to anonymize our phone calls in order to keep them being logged and tracked by our own government. We should not have to be proactive against our own government.
Don’t you see what is happening? Common American citizens are being tracked, logged and investigated without any probable cause. This is the norm in countries that we consider scum for their actions, countries like China and Russia.
The first Ammendment, the freedom of the press, is in serious danger here. Secretly tracking a reporter’s phone conversations to find confidential sources. If that is not breaking the first ammendment, I don’t know what is.
And remember, this is all one sided, directed against those people that may embarass or indict the conduct of our government. If the government can track the calls of the press, shouldn’t the press be able to have access to the same logs so it can track the conduct of the government? If the press is not there to possibly expose government misconduct, then who is… the government itself?
All this in the name of freedom…
The Republican party, with it’s support of these activities, is destroying all that America has stood for over a couple of centuries. Republicans may not have to adopt ‘Liberal’ values, but they do not have to stand by and be participants in the desintegration of everything that America has always stood for.
When will conservatives realize that the threshold has been crossed, and that the policies that this government has adopted are not only illicit, but they are Anti-American.
hmm,
An inelegance agency, who is trying to find who leaked classified information that could help terrorists avoid being tracked and or captured, is trying to stop the leaks by looking at the end point and “backtracking” to the source so the can stop it.
Sounds good to me.
Oh, I forgot, the Left (including a large part of the news media) is more interested in bringing down Pres. Bush than bringing down terrorists. my bad.
The press just publicizes whatever the government announces, so since when was this a major loss of “freedom of the press”?
God bless the “federal source” who is becoming more and more of a modern-day Deep Throat. I hope something is done quickly before we’re all forced to join the party… the Republican Party.
Hey Jim W. and other Bush-apologists, If Hilary was doing the same thing, what would you think about this? Yeah, I thought so. Stop with the left vs, right stuff and think if this is something you want your government doing!
How stupid do they think terrorists are?
After the heat turned up on them after 9/11 I doubt they would call each other and chat.
The idea of leaving email in a “work” folder that any member with a password could read, but not have sent as email was clever.
Its interesting to speculate on combining this information with the speech out by the head of HUD. Hmm, check all contractors, see if they are calling anyone opposed to the Bush administration……In the name of routine security clearance of course…
Hillary actually had FBI files of politicians and a program monitoring the press called the Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce.
I wouldn’t have a probelm with Pres. Clinton(either one) having the justice department get phone records in the course of an investigation.
Twig. I am thinking about what my government is doing. I want my government to protect me from terrorism. And I want them to be able to do it without worrying about leaks that compromise national security for the purpose of gaining political points against an opponent
Leo Laporte (no “Bush-apologist” from what I’ve heard) in TWiT ep.54, after John explained the full story of the phone records database, at least had an intelligent response when he said, and I paraphrase, it was ok to do this sort of thing as long as they did it through the courts. I have no problem with that or how the President is doing it.
I’m just tired of all the whining of the Left without offering an alternative on how to track terrorists inside our country. It makes it sound a lot like all the Left wants to do is rebuild “The Wall” that prevented the government from perhaps stopping Sept. 11 in the first place.
All I ask is that you, and or the Left, come up with a real policy alternative instead of just screaming rhetoric.
There, my rant is done for this topic. Good night, and good luck.
Why do we give the Gov’t so much blame for their incompetency on one hand and so much credit on the other hand. lets be consistent.
the CIA did not predict the downfall of the Soviet Union or the lack of WMD. Judging by the number of successful leaks, they are not able to stop those, either. Don’t be afraid. They can not harm you.
Keeping track of telephone numbers is not a privacy problem since I’ve known the phone company make them available to police all the time, on almost every tv detective show we learn that.
Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the President who infringed most on citizen privacy. It works, when needed. And, when not needed, it is normally not done because the government bueracarts are citizens just like you and me, except they work in very inefficient organizations that don’t work.
I do hnave a problem with Pres Clinton’s justice Department jailing a journalist for his investigation into the crash of TWA 800. They had him on a charge of stealing evidence, because he managed to get some fabric samples from one of the chairs for his own testing(which showed explosives).
DIDnt we already do this, THIS week??
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=5383
I’m glad a couple people in here noticed that the FBI investigation of ABC is for a criminal probe of leaking classified intelligence information to reporters. Any police agency has the right to do what the FBI is doing, it’s part of 1000 investigations a day around this country.
But some in here keep trying to mix apples and oranges, this is NOT part of the NSA phone call logging story.
What the NSA is doing is totally different and by a totally different organisation. I’m a consservative, I do not support Bush, but so far, I see nothing wrong with either of these stories.
If the reporters want to do an expose, they maybe need to think of using something other than public phones or emails. Maybe they could ask a few of their older or retired predessors about how to actually do investigative journalism.
Someone said above that the Democrats seem to offer nothing but critisism and I agree…..at some point you have to say what YOU would do to keep this country safe. If the Democrats aren’t careful they may get what they wish for…..and then they will have to govern, and they are clueless.
A news organization has to report news that will either excite you or piss you off. All of the other emotions “don’t sell many papers” It is their job to tell us when our government is doing something that is illegal. If Richard Nixon would have been able to pull some of the legal card tricks that Bush is now performing, he would have never been up for impeachment. The tapes were a matter of national security and couldn’t be accessed by the public. This looks more like the Wizard of Oz than the american government that I served and believe is right. Ignore the man behind the curtain, just do as we tell you, we will tell you how to live.
Lawyers are pointing out that this warrentless spying and ends lawyer-client confidentiality ecept for face-to-face.
Is that not a big hairy deal?
To Twig (13)
You want legal and appropriate tracking of people in the USA?
Simple. It’s called a FISA court. You need probable cause and you have 72 hours to show that you have probable cause after you start monitoring.
But the core of the discussion here is not terrorism prevention, it is the dismantling of the system of checks and balances that keeps our government from naturally becoming a dictatorship. It is about everyone being required to follow the law, not exempt themselves as they see fit with no reasonable or even stated justification. It is about the ability to watch over those that govern us, and hold them accountable.
Under the justification of “Homeland Security”, the current administration has taken steps that have no precedent in American history, with maybe the exception as aberrations such as the Japanese internment during WWII that are generally recognized as shameful moments in our history.
There was a terrorist attack on our country, perpetrated by 20 people or so, yet we have reacted in a way that is beyond all intelligent justification. The closest we have come during the past 100 years to the behaviour that is being exhibited now is maybe the Macarthy (sp?) hearings, were everyone that disagreed with the government was labeled a communist. If you know anything about history, you know most of them weren’t.
If you believe in freedom and democracy, you must fight every time that a freedom is removed and a dissenting voice is quelched. You must ask if the benefit justifies the consequences. You must ask if the risk justifies the reward. And in most cases at this level there is an alternative that does not destroy what America stands for. The current administration ( I refuse to call it the Bush presidency since he is nothing but a puppet) has steadily taken away all those freedoms and virtues that we call the American Way, under the guise of “Homeland Security” but in reality just to have tighter monitoring and control of the average American citizen. Remember.. you need a Passport to leave the country now… something you didn’t need 5 years ago. And who you talk to is logged. Shades of the USSR. Is this the “Amerika” you want to live in?
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin
We have no need for the crap that the government is doing. Screw the terrorists, I prefer my freedom intact.
Do you know what these terrorists want? It’s not money, or power.. it’s to destroy our way of life. Every screened call in the name of stopping terrorists is a casualty on our side.